I am so happy to have started this blog. I’m Nicole Atchley, I have lived a life where leadership roles have been evident since I was 14. My leadership journey began when I was enrolled in the JROTC program in high school and it was there that I began to realize that some people are born leaders, some are made and others, well they should stick to following. It was there that I saw, there are people put into positions that are undeserving, untrained and unprofessional. It was also there where I saw people with natural born leadership skills, that can get people to follow them anywhere.
When I joined the Army Reserves, it was in Basic Training that I accepted that I had the natural ability to lead. It didn’t matter what I did to stay out under the radar, people gravitated towards me. People were constantly asking me to teach them, train them and would follow my every lead. As much as I tried to tell people no, I couldn’t help but to guide them and help them know the things that I knew. Throughout my Army career I have learned so much about leadership and have taken these lessons to develop myself into a leader that I would be proud to follow. The Army taught me that leaders at all levels need training and it is an essential part of their development.
Early in my Army career I was deployed overseas ( this was back in 2004), upon my return I was encourage to take the NYC Correction Officer test. I took the test and passed. I became a NYC Correction Officer, where of course I was forced into leadership in the Academy and was annoyed by the lack of leadership development when I got out of the Academy. As a Correction Officer I had to work under supervisors that were promoted because they passed an exam, not because of competence. They were not put in these positions based on their ability to lead, train or effectively manage a housing area, they were promoted based on their ability to remember policies. These supervisors lacked the ability to effectively lead officers. The ones with natural abilities and prior military experience often did well, while others were terrible at their jobs. I couldn’t believe that an organization with such an important job lacked the foresight to ensure that those chosen to make life decisions were so poorly prepared to do so.
Naturally I didn’t stay a Correction Officer, after 6 years I had moved on. During that time I became an Army Reserve Drill Sgt, a Combatives Instructor and trained thousands of deploying Soldiers. I was pretty done with the unprofessional and under trained supervision of the Dept. of Corrections. I ended up working in youth development and ran into many of the same issues. People lack the ability to lead and it is not always because they don’t want to be better leaders, but it is because they lack the training. This is where I come in, I want to lead and train people to be better versions of themselves so that they will have better prepared and more productive staff, it’s all about Perspective.
Come on this journey with me. Leaders lead from the rear, because they can see everything that is around them. They can see where the team is falling short, the strengths and the weaknesses. From the rear you can see the whole picture and make necessary adjustments. Of course we always hear the term, “LEAD FROM THE FRONT”, that is more about setting the example, and will always be the case, but if you always stand in front of your people, you will never know what is going on behind you.
By: Nicole Atchley
“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all abut growing others.”
Jack Welch
The Leadership Perspective 